I took my "Preventive Medicine" final today. It was a lot more difficult than I expected, but I think I did okay. Taking the stupid test wasn't the worst part of my day. The worst part of my day was walking out of the exam only to see the class of 2008 lined up in all their regalia. It's not fair!! I wanna graduate!!

After taking a walk on the undergrad campus, Jo and I slipped into the auditorium to watch a bit of the degree ceremony, or hooding or whatever you call it. I'm glad I caught a glimpse of what goes on. For example, I learned that as I am walking across the stage to receive my diploma, I will be called Dr. Pam. If I had not known that, I might've turned around and left the stage, thinking "Oh, they mean somebody else."

Okay, here's my to-do list for the weekend:

Physical Diagnosis final exam- this is open book, and the only reason I don't already have it done is sheer laziness.
The Great Closet Reorganizing of 2008- I started this last night, when I should've been studying biostats. As I was arranging all my "white coat" attire, I realized that the next time I wear any of that stuff, I'll be a third year. Scary!!
Pharm studying- It's not going to be pretty, but I have to do a lot of it between now and Thursday. I just don't know where I'm going to find the motivation.

Done done done done done done done done done. Done done done done done, done done! Done done done. Done... done done done? Done done!!

The Path final started out great. I started with the last page, as usual, so the first thing I saw was a Neuropath question covering a concept that we've had drilled into us since first year. Softball! It was a nice boost of confidence, which I needed as I took the rest of the test. Every time I felt like I could rattle off four facts about a disease, they asked for five. I knew three risk factors, they asked for four. It hurt my brain. But, I'm confident that I got my P. So I'm 3/8 a doctor, with only one semester and a little test thing standing between me and the wards. SCARY.


P.S.- to celebrate, the roomie and I are going to crack open a bottle of In Situ wine. How appropriate.

Unless I become a neurologist or neurosurgeon, I will never in my life have more knowledge of neuroanatomy than I did at 8:59 this morning. We were told that today's cumulative exam would be a 60-40 split between material covered before the midterm, and stuff covered since. I thought that just meant there'd be a lot of locating neurologic lesions, because everything we learned about anatomic diagnosis was in the first half of the semester. Two questions into the practical exam (embryo???!?!), I knew I was very wrong. It was a lot more nitpicky about the old material than I expected. Even though I know I didn't cover myself in glory, I'm fairly confident I passed. Now I've just got Psychiatry tomorrow and Pathology on Thursday. I know there's something special about the day after our last final, but for now I can't seem to remember what that is.

Well, Finals Time is truly upon us! Can you feel the excitement in the air? I sure can.

Friday's Radiology exam was fine, although I despair of ever seeing anything on ultrasound. You may be thinking, 'That's okay, just don't become an OB/GYN,' but it's not that simple. As I learned while studying for my exam, Ultrasound is used to visualize a variety of things. Even the digestive system. So I'll need to get better at some point.

I'm currently studying in a windowless conference room on an upper floor of our classroom building. Classmates who know about this room call it 'that awful room' and 'the land that God forgot', but it's not terrible. Sure, I can't see outside, and can go hours at a time without seeing another human being, and if I died up here it'd be days until they found me, but...whiteboard easels!! Plus, I can be secure in the knowledge that I won't be competing with very many people for the room. You have to show up at 9am to get a good 4th floor room. I got to school at 3:30 this afternoon! Take that!!

Okay, back to the limbic system.

Path exam was fine. The image-based part of the exam was set up differently than any we've had before. We got a packet with the questions already typed out for us, and the images were on a Powerpoint show that was set on a timer. Usually, we just get a sheet of paper with blank spaces, and the professor manually advances the slideshow, reading the corresponding questions out loud. This new way threw me off a bit at first, but now I think it's far superior. Mostly because it meant we didn't have to deal with people asking ridiculous questions to stall for more time.

Instead, the new trend among the second years is to ask for a bathroom break during the image-based exam. I don't get it!! Assuming you take care of business before heading in (because the 8am start time isn't exactly unannounced), what physiologic process could possibly be going on that would make you need to pee again at 8:41? Somebody help me understand. (Note: I'm a tea drinker and still able to maintain, so that explanation won't...er...hold water.)

ANYWAY. Midterms are done. I discovered that mild burnout before exams is a lot better than extreme distress during exams. So I guess I'll stick with the consistent review during the second half of the semester. And now I get a break, during which I have to put together a Pathology presentation, write up a Psychiatry patient interview, and do a lot of Emphasis stuff. We'll see how much of that actually gets done while I'm visiting people in ATL, reliving the glory days of DUC brunch (for $$ instead of free), and seeing MAROON 5 on Wednesday!!!

6:25am: Alarm clock on my nightstand starts going off.

6:35am: Cell phone alarm starts going off.

6:45am: Johanna calls me, and doesn't hang up until I confirm that I am up and getting ready.

7:15am: I leave my apartment.

7:55am: I get to school, later than most of my classmates who were able to wake up a full hour later than I did. Yet another reminder that deciding to live in Bellevue was the single worst decision of my life.

8am-2pm: Got my ass handed to me by the Histo final. Lowlights included trying to remember just what distinguishes the thyroid from the prostate, and realizing that maybe I should have learned what shape insulin crystals are. Highlight- the Van Gogh-vary picture made an appearance.

2pm-4pm: Lunch at Jackson's. Actually the best burger I've had in a long time.

4pm-7pm: Dead to the world on the couch at the apartment formerly known as my second home.

Now I'm back at school, kinda paralyzed in fear at the thought of how screwed I am for Virology.

I'm writing this as I sit in the abandoned, nearly-dead mall near my apartment. My car's being held hostage... I mean inspected and serviced. I had to make sure that she'd be ready for the road trip on Sunday!! Yeah, it's a 9+ hour drive, but I'm looking forward to it. I'm surprising Mom, who has been really stressed lately, with having Momo at the house and all. I think having her baby walk through the door when she least expects it will do her a world of good. I'll even behave while I'm at home: I'll and go to bed when I'm told and wake up when I'm told and accept being treated like I'm not an adult even though I am!! Er. I actually am looking forward to being home, and making my mommy happy. Plus, if it's like Fall Break, the road trip could make the whole thing worth it.

Today was our Physiology midterm. Out of the first thirty questions, I was only confident about nine. Then I went back and reasoned my way into educated guesses on another ten. Then I went back again and reasoned my way into half-educated guesses, based on at least one bit of vaguely-remembered information, for another eight questions. Then I said "Fuck it, the information's not going to appear in my head," and guessed pretty much randomly for the last three. I could tell that everybody around me was doing the same. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The sucky thing is, the material wasn't actually that hard... nothing we've learned so far is. It wasn't even that nitpicky like Anatomy and Histo and Micro tests can be. The questions were all perfectly reasonable, and gettable if I'd spent more than just this one week studying the stuff. But I hadn't, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turns out I got below a 60%. I can't even use the "it wasn't taught well" excuse because I was never in class. If I failed, I think they'll make me get a tutor, but I might get one even if I managed to pass. Not to help me understand stuff, but to force me to study more. Lord knows I hate meeting to "talk through" material if I haven't gone over it on my own beforehand.

So the midterm was somewhat depressing, but as soon as we were finishing word got out that the Cadaver Ball DVDs were ready!! That instantly made the whole day better. The video skits have been available on YouTube for a while, but we've had to wait for the live acts. A bunch of us gathered around a computer in the student lounge to watch the first-year band and the stomp/step dance. AMAZING. I just have to ask myself, how can one med school class contain such awesomeness?

And Fiona's ready to pick up, already. It's a good thing these people are fast. I was about to head to Chik-Fil-A for some food. I only just realized that I wouldn't have been able to get the fries (gave up potatoes for Lent). That would've been pretty sad...Chik-Fil-A without waffle fries is like a neuromuscular junction without a nicotinic ACh receptor.

I apologize. That won't happen again.

Back to my normal non-awesomeness. Anatomy exams were returned today. I'm going to start by saying that toastedkelp was right; testing us on everything from the diaphragm down was pretty freaking ridiculous. Who does that? Somehow, in some way I'm not ready to question, I'm still passing the class as a whole. But I got my shit thoroughly rocked, especially on the lab practical. I think, statistically, I would've done better if I'd been given a word bank and just picked things at random. And all I'll say about the written exam is that I owe Johanna, big time, for teaching me everything I needed to know about lymph, ten hours before the exam. My eldest daughter will definitely have some extra h's in her name.

Today's preceptorship seemed designed to be a summary of the entire semester of Anatomy. Dr. B. did an Allen test on a patient considering a radial free flap. Then I "got to" take dorsalis pedis and posterior tibial pulses on a patient considering a fibula free flap. I put "got to" in quotes because Yay, awesome, I helped! But...touching feet. And then I was able to identify the mental foramen on a scan of a mandible. Pretty exciting stuff.

To cap off the evening, my white coat is now missing. I wore it from 10am to 6:30pm. I left it on top of my bag for half an hour while eating dinner across the hall, and somebody made off with it. Right now, I'm hoping somebody accidentally picked it up from on top of my bag, and will return it soon. I'm also glad that I took my phone, ID, and iPod out of the pockets before I placed it on top of my bag and went across the hall for half an hour. Goodness.

One more day before Thanksgiving break, one more push before the semester ends.

I could have studied more, but the odds are, no matter how much I studied, I wasn't going to learn the exact nitpicky details that were asked about.

Concentrating on the written notes, slides, and atlases does translate into more knowledge on the practical, but only to a point.

It's all about calculated risk-taking. I decided that it would pay off to pay less attention to the thigh, in favor of urogenital embryo. Possibly the worst decision I could have made, but how could I have known that ahead of time?

During the slide portion of the exam, we're allowed to ask questions about the images, but asking stuff like the age or the sex of the specimen will get the slide thrown out. One of the slides Dr. Dalley put up today was an image of an obviously pregnant woman. He said, "I know I told you that you're not supposed to ask about sex, but it's appropriate this time. The answer is, at least once." Think about it...or maybe not. It might've just taken us a few minutes to get it because our brains were dead. Anyway, that was my one genuine smile of the test day.

Now, the rest of this week will be a break from studying, then I need to start the whole process over again. I only have one more Gross Anatomy exam to take, ever. That's pretty sweet.

We started a new unit in Biochem today. Lipid metabolism, taught by Dr. Marnett. I really like him so far. If he throws in a few more random historical and pop culture references, he'll be tied for my favorite biochem lecturer. At one point this morning he mentioned something about lipid micelles being used for drug delivery... There was a bit of a fuss because that topic came up during Monday's exam, and apparently we weren't taught the information. I couldn't say for sure, since I was only there for two days of the section. However, word in the bathroom* is that it was noted on one page of the first packet of notes we got from that section's lecturer. I'll buy that...I'm the type of student who finds it much, much easier to believe that I just slept through/ignored/missed some information, as opposed to a professor maliciously testing me on something he didn't teach. And let's be honest, among all the metabolic pathways and signaling mechanisms, the "What is a phospholipid?" packet didn't get much of my attention.

That exam question did throw me, by the way, but I put 'micelles' when I couldn't think of anything particular we'd learned this semester. After all, I spent the past two years of my life using "drug delivery systems" as the default real-life application for my computational research on the thermodynamics of micelle aggregation. Which brings the grand total of times my project has been useful to...one.

*There is no word on the street during first year. We do our chit-chatting during our ten minute bathroom breaks.


I interviewed at Vandy a year ago today. The first impression was not the greatest, but I'm happy I came here and I'm five hundred percent sure I picked the right school for me.

My classmates and I were hazed today. Really, that's the only word for it. First: today was the day we were told we'd get our graded Anatomy exams back. Then, a couple of days ago one of the Anatomy professors sent out this long email about today's class. It basically said that we'd be going in to lab at 8am, to visually explore the abdominal cavity. Then we'd have lecture about the stuff we'd just seen. She gave this whole long explanation about how it would probably be easier for us to understand the material in the lecture, if we'd already seen the physical structures first. Which is reasonable, but some of the more pessimistic people in the class (myself included) instantly thought, "Wow. How badly did we do on the exam, that they're changing the whole structure of the class in an attempt to help us learn better?"

So this morning, first thing, we went in and did our visual exploration. During that session, Dr. Dalley announced to the class that from now on, at the beginning of each lab period we'll be presenting the information from the previous lab session. He said something about that helping to solidify our grasp of the material, and definitely used the exact phrase "Because it seems not many groups have been doing that." The day graded exams are returned, you tell us you're redesigning the class on the freaking spot, and give a reason like that? So. An hour into the day, and my nerves are already shot.

It only got better from there. We had lecture forever. It was a three-lecture day that was actually more like a five-lecture day...certainly the longest day we've had yet. It didn't help that all three lectures were given by the same lecturer, who's known for her ability to cover the most material in the shortest amount of time. The exam grades might not have been mentioned all that much, but it was hanging over everybody's heads. The Powerpoint slides might as well have read "EXAM GRADES. EXAM GRADES. EXAM GRADES." Oh, and at lunch time, instead of having free time to relax, we had a "Meet the Promotions Committee" info meeting. It basically went, "Here are the people who decide if you go to the next year or not! Here's what happens if you fail a bunch of exams like the one you are going to be getting back VERY, VERY SOON! But don't worry, you all probably did fine. Let's talk about repeating a year." Not cool.

[whine]Also, I am seriously going to have a sit-down with a Dean about scheduling mandatory lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Non-mandatory info sessions and lectures, whatever, that's a choice. I usually skip those, because the idea of a free lunch is not THAT great, especially when we're already having our brains overwhelmed for eight or nine hours. I really don't think it's fair to take away the one hour of free time we do get.[/whine]

The fourth and fifth of the five lectures were after lunch. We'd been told that the exams would be in our boxes at 3. As the lecture dragged on, I'm sure more eyes were on the clock than on the slides. 3:00 came...and went...the lecture finally ended. But we weren't dismissed! Dr. Dalley came up to talk to us about the exam. That dragged on. And then, "They'll be in your boxes by 4:30." So we had to go to afternoon lab with this thing still hanging over our heads. Longest lab ever.

It was 5 when I finally went and got my exam. I got the P, which is all that matters in life. But really, I can't adequately describe how much they managed to build up the suspense today. It had to be on purpose.

Trivia tonight was fun, but I need to go to bed so I can't say much about it. I'll just say that toastedkelp missed House in order to play trivia, because she's awesome.

Taking the time to go to the hair salon yesterday, and Sunday school/church today, might have been a mistake. I was feeling okay about my grasp of the material...now I'm back to feeling sucky, just like on Friday! Or Thursday, or whenever it was. The days all blend together. The amount of material I'm expected to be familiar with is staggering. At this point, I'm just looking over everything I can, one more time. Then I'm hoping that the part of my brain that remembers that Vladimir Nabokov collected butterflies will decide to make itself useful and store a few of the billion facts I need to remember.

I actually think there are quite a few people who feel the way I do. Problem is, none of us are as vocal as the people who are all, "Oh no, I mixed up steps 17b and 17c of embryologic heart development! Whatever shall I do??? I'm going to fail!!" Meanwhile, I and the other people who are still working on steps 1 and 2 are shamed into silence. Not cool.

Also not cool is the genius who scheduled 2 hours of biochem lecture, a clinical correlation, an Ecology of Healthcare lecture, and a small group discussion on the day before an Anatomy exam. And a full day of biochem + Mind and Medicine the day after the exam. Turnout should be interesting.

On the way to campus today, I saw some people walking to a synagogue, and was struck by such a sudden pang of homesickness that it was actually painful. At that moment I would've given anything to be driving down Lavista instead of West End. It's weird, the things that make me miss being at Emory.

Biochem exam is done. I feel pretty good about it. Unlike the previous exam, I did not leave any of the mechanisms blank. That doesn't mean I got them right, but at least I have a better chance. For one question we were supposed to draw an inhibition mechanism, and I did this whole big long thing...realizing at the end that in my mechanism, the enzyme worked. That's not supposed to happen. So I fixed that as best I could. There were some other things I was iffy about, but it's kinda late to worry about all that. I did get one of the bonus questions: What is La Gioconda? Yay +2 points!

The other bonus question was to name any 6 of the 7 artists whose music Gallivan had purchased on iTunes during the past week, or month, or something. That's not as ridiculous as it sounds- class lectures are available on Podcast, and I guess you could see his whole music collection. I wouldn't know. I never listened to the podcasts. So I guessed! Anna Nalick, System of a Down, Fall Out Boy, Kanye West, R. Kelly, and Coldplay.

Now, I don't really have time to think about Biochem anymore, or to breathe, really. Because stat mech is Wednesday.

Woke up this morning. Studied chapter 13 in biochem, all about enzyme kinetics. Realized that the biochem kinetics stuff overlaps with the kinetics stuff I'm studying in stat mech, even if it is a lot simpler. So basically, the rest of my semester boils down to kinetics. Hooray.

I spent most of the day studying hard, so I could go over to Kim's goodbye party tonight. She's spending next semester in France, and I will never ever see her again! It's really sad, guys. There was a LOT of DDR. It was quite fun. Very intense, though. It was awesome. I got like, the same workout as a five-mile run or something. Jenn L. and I discovered that "Celebrate Nite" is the best song, ever. We did that one like, six or seven times. I feel like I need to buy a video game system and the whole shebang just for the purpose of playing that one game.

Bedtime now, because tomorrow I have to study even harder than I did today!

As I predicted, biochem devastated me. It was a giant orgo test, and I haven't been in the giant orgo test mindset since I was 17 years old. It was too long in the first place, and on top of that we started late, and on top of that the TAs kept insisting that we use pen. Chemistry tests are in pencil, that's a rule. You can't do huge mechanisms in pen. You can't do huge mechanisms in pencil and then do them over in pen..at least, not if you want to finish. I scrawled a note to the professor across the front page of the test, about the ridiculousness of having to do mechanisms in pen. The more I think about that, the more I cringe, because I did awfully on that test, pen or no pen. So that note will make me look very petulant. Not that I have to make a good impression on Emory people anymore.

I'll admit, I should have studied more. But none of that other stuff helped. Ah well. I luckily was able to pull the cyanogen bromide mechanism out of my ass at the last moment. But the peptide coupling just didn't happen for me. Leaving 25-point questions blank does not bode well for a test score. It was funny, to see a person leave the exam on the verge of tears, and then later hear that same person bragging about how easy they thought the test was. Those weren't happy tears I saw, so I call bullshit on that one. As I call bullshit on most things that person says.

On to things that are more worth my time to ponder, I need to know if Vandy might rescind their offer based on grades. Because I'm not covering myself in glory. I need to shape up no matter what, it's just a matter of how much I need to stress about it.

In other news, the food drive APhiO did? Hugely successful. I'm very happy with how it turned out. There's so much food in my car right now, it's crazy. I deliver it to the place tomorrow afternoon.

That biochem grade that I won't remember a few weeks from now? 87.5, half a point below the cutoff point for an A. I'm very pleased with the grade. It's good, considering I've never in my life been more distracted during an exam. While taking it, I kept looking at the people four seats away and thinking "They're farther away from me than Chris Martin was." I was tempted to write out song lyrics on every page. I was super bouncy. And I still managed to get a pseudo-A.

Now, I'm not so pleased with stat mech, I don't really know what I'm going to do...a C is decent. Med schools have my grades. It's a grad class, they'd understand anyway. I need to really buckle down, though. I haven't studied since the Wednesday night fiasco. It's like I'm afraid that if I'm sitting down to study stat mech, I'm missing something important. But I'm missing class Wednesday, which is going to suck, majorly. There's nobody to borrow notes from except the professor himself, since the other students don't speak enough english to understand the lecture the same way I do. That won't stop me from borrowing somebody's notes to copy down the math, but it's still kinda sucky. I need a detailed list of questions with which I can bother Kaledin, and to get that list I need to go over my notes over and over. Oh, life is so rough.

For my own memory aid, I'm posting the set list from Wednesday night.

Square One
Politik
Yellow
Speed of Sound
God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
White Shadows
Trouble
Everything's Not Lost
The Scientist
Til Kingdom Come/Ring of Fire
Don't Panic
Clocks
Talk
Encore
Nightswimming (Michael Stipe!)
In My Place
Fix You

Whee! I'm in a pretty good mood today, especially considering I failed stat mech. Not "fail" fail, like a C. I'm thinking, more around 33% F. F-, even...maybe a G or an H. I suck at life! I dunno. Depending on exactly how I do, I might try to withdraw? And thus quit honors, because I think they'd give me a W/F unless I said I was withdrawing because I wasn't doing a thesis anymore. Or I might just try to suck it up and soldier on. We'll see!

It just seems like my test instinct was gone for these two exams. Usually, I'm freakishly good at anticipating the questions that will be asked. But for stat mech, it's like I studied all the wrong stuff. And I put in a LOT of hours for that class...bah. For biochem, I screwed myself by not reading EVERY SINGLE PDF FILE. Dumbass move on my part, I'll do better next time.

I must say, a reason I like chemistry so much better is that we don't get all this superfluous crap to learn. You don't need twenty pages of PDFs to prove the significance of whatever concept you just learned. You get equations, that if adapted correctly, can describe any number of situations as accurately as you'd like. It may be difficult sometimes, but it has a certain elegance to it. An elegance that elegantly kicked my ass this morning. I haven't felt that lost during an exam since freshman orgo.

OH WELL! No time to dwell on that! I have papers to write, service projects to set up, presentations to prepare! Time to get busy!

Once again, I went to sleep fairly early last night. That's early for me, which for most people would still be quite late. Anyway, my plan was to wake up somewhat early, and be productive. I had a little trouble waking up, though. I would glance at my clock, congratulate myself on how early I'd be getting up, close my eyes, and open them twenty minutes later. I did that about three times. I finally got up around 8:30, which is still good stuff. I've had a decent breakfast, and studied some stat mech. Now I'm going to get ready to head over to campus, so I can track down Dr. Kaledin and talk to him about some of these homework problems.

It's raining today! That makes me incredibly happy. It's been almost a full month since we had any rain.

I realized that I have, essentially, two days left to study for these two huge exams. Hold me...okay that's enough. Despite these big, and I'm sure difficult, exams, I am still going to see Coldplay on Wednesday night. Missing the concert never even crossed my mind as a possibility. It's going to be rock. It'd rock more if Kathryn would STOP BEING A WUSS AND GO TO THE CONCERT BECAUSE SHE'LL DO FINE IN BIOCHEM ANYWAY...but that's just my opinion.

The O.C. is a great show to watch soon after taking a very unfun exam. Not much thinking required, even with their plot twists and "shocking" endings. It's so fun when you can call not only the surprise ending, but the exact dialogue that reveals the surprise.

The exam went fairly well. I was pretty solid on the old stuff, not so much on the new material. Not too long ago I posted about using paper and a safety pen to figure out the symmetry of some complicated-ass molecule. Guess which complicated-ass molecule was on the test. One guaranteed point, yesssss! At least it's over.

Tomorrow (later today, technically): Working on the English paper, Working on MoMoSim final project. If I get into a groove, I will not be watching 24. I'll just wait, and watch it with the rest of the little people.

Once again, the stuff that we practiced, and I knew I could do...wasn't on the exam. But I think all my studying paid off somewhat, as I was able to reason my way through a couple of tricky problems. Or at least, I reasoned my way partly through. I think I may have done better than I did on the first exam, which would be GREAT. Fingers crossed until Monday!

Now, I can watch a day of basketball without anything to distract me. I'll be working on stuff, of course. But unlike yesterday, I'm not in a situation where I cannot be distracted.

Stupid website I have to put together...stupid lab reports...stupid me for putting stuff off.

University of Louisiana, Lafayette is playing NC State right now. Go Ragin' Cajuns! It's funny that the announcers keep calling them Lalaf, when everybody knows it's ULaLa (ooh, la la!). It's funny that they try to pronounce Lafayette in the French way, when even Cajun people pronounce it "Laffy-ette." It's funny that they keep describing things as "spicy" to go with the Cajun theme. It's GREAT that ULaLa's winning at the moment. Yay!

Okay bye.